If you’re a publisher who’s been waiting for the opportunity to make your content available through Facebook Instant Articles, you don’t have to wait too much longer: Facebook will open up Instant Articles to all publishers in April, the company announced Wednesday.

“We’ve gotten a ton of inbound interest from customers,” Facebook product manager Josh Roberts said. “It has always been our vision to create something that works for publishers all over the world.” Today’s announcement should help alleviate concerns that smaller outlets, especially local news organizations, weren’t getting equal access.

Hundreds of publishers worldwide are now using Instant Articles. The last batch was announced in December, but Facebook said it’s signing more every day, including companies with multiple media properties.

who will be the first big-name journalist to go it alone with Instant Articles?

Facebook has spent time incorporating these early users’ feedback into the product. In December, for instance, it loosened its advertising policies and added the option to include “Related Articles” at the bottom of a story. A few publishers recently told The Wall Street Journal that Instant Articles “currently generate the same amount of ad revenue on a per-view basis as pageviews on their own mobile properties.”

Roberts reiterated what Michael Reckhow (the former Instant Articles product manager, now on paternity leave) told me in October: Instant Articles get clicked on, interacted with, and shared more than regular articles. Users “look for that lightning bolt and want every article to be an Instant Article,” he said.

You can sell ads that are placesdin your publication’s Instant Articles and keep all the money. Or you can have Facebook sell the ads for you and keep ~70% of the money.

J Munce

How does that benefit publishers? I mean, instead of ads on a publisher’s webpage, Facebook places ads on Facebook, which they then ask “Instant Article” publishers to pay for distributing? Am I misunderstanding this?

Yeah, you’re misunderstanding it. You can sell ads on your Instant Articles just as you can sell ads on your own website. (There are some guidelines about how many ads you can have on the page and such, but you can sell them and keep all the money you make.) Or you have Facebook sell the ads for you if you’d like, and keep 70% of the money. Publishers don’t pay anything in either scenario.

J Munce

Well, it seems then that it doesn’t benefit publishers, unless the revenue from the ads they offer to place for you is very high. Traffic will not be gong to your website, so you won’t be recognized in search engines for popularity, won’t be getting mailing list sign ups, won’t be getting as much brand exposure, won’t be able to control the user flow through your content as much, etc.

The only benefit I can see to this is if Facebook offered ad revenue much higher than that offered by other advertisers , which publishers already have on their websites.

Owen, L. (2016, Feb. 17). Facebook Instant Articles will open up to all publishers in April. Nieman Journalism Lab. Retrieved December 13, 2017, from http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/02/any-publisher-can-start-using-facebook-instant-articles-on-april-12/

Chicago

Owen, Laura Hazard. "Facebook Instant Articles will open up to all publishers in April." Nieman Journalism Lab. Last modified February 17, 2016. Accessed December 13, 2017. http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/02/any-publisher-can-start-using-facebook-instant-articles-on-april-12/.